


The Red String: Fate or Fairy Tale?

by StoriesbyReese



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Emotions, F/F, Red String, Red String of Fate, mentions of steve - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:00:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24508054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StoriesbyReese/pseuds/StoriesbyReese
Summary: An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may tangle, or stretch, but it will never break.Peggy isn't sure if she believes in the Red String, but fate is fate for a reason.
Relationships: Peggy Carter & Angie Martinelli, Peggy Carter/Angie Martinelli
Comments: 8
Kudos: 74





	The Red String: Fate or Fairy Tale?

**Author's Note:**

> This story is dedicated to the ladies of the L&L Automat and was inspired by a recent conversation about favorite AUs.

Everyone is born with a thin red line circling one of their pinky fingers. For Margaret Elizabeth Carter, who everyone but her grandmother called Peggy, the thin red circle was on her left pinky. When she was very little her mother would sit in the garden with Peggy on her lap and explain what the red line meant. “That, my darling, is where your end of your red string is tied.” Her red string. Some called it the red string of fate, or the red string of destiny, while others called it the red string of marriage. Whatever it was called it meant one thing and one thing only. “Somewhere out there,” Amanda Carter explained to her small daughter. “In that great big wide world the other end of your string is tied to the right hand of the person you’re destined to love.” 

In the pure heart and mind of a child it was a romantic concept. The idea that somewhere out there the person she was meant to love was waiting for her. Peggy used to sit by her window at night and look up into the night sky and wonder who it was. What were they doing at that very moment? Could they be sitting in their window looking at their patch of sky, wondering about her? When she was a girl, Peggy was always being scolded by her mother for taking the red thread from her sewing basket. She would tie one end of the thread to her favorite doll’s little rag hand, and then weave it through bushes, around trees, through her father’s flower beds. Then she would tie the other end around her pinky, around her thin red mark, and spend the afternoon untangling the thread in search of her true love. Not even the smack of her father’s hand for trampling his flowers or the slap of her mother’s slipper for ruining another spool of good thread across her bottom could dampen the adventure and romance of seeking out the other end of her red string.

But what her parents' chastisements could not dampen growing up; finding her young adult self in a world on the brink of war, did. The end of Michael’s red sting was tied around his right pinky, or at least that is where his thin red line had been. Michael was dead, killed in action, did that mean that whoever was on the other end of his supposed string was now left without true love? Rubbish, Peggy had decided, pure fantasy and twaddle. A fairy story to tell innocent children to brighten an otherwise dark world. And yet, in the back of her mind she can still hear her mother’s soft voice telling her that when she is near her love she will feel a tug, or a tingle, in her finger. She hadn’t felt anything with Fred, and she truly had cared for him, so more evidence that it was all pure poppycock.

Then she was sent to the States, New Jersey to be precise, and suddenly Peggy couldn’t stop scratching at her left pinky. At first she convinced herself that something must have bitten her. She was, after all, on an army base in the middle of the woods in a foreign country with weird American bugs. She could not, however, ignore or explain away the tug she felt when she accompanied Colonel Phillips into Manhattan. She was going over reports with him in the car when she felt the undeniable pull on her pinky, causing her to stop talking, and turn to look out the window with wide eyes. 

“Agent Carter?” Phillips grumbles at her. 

“What area are we passing, Sir?” Peggy asks in return. 

Phillips leans forward a bit to look past Peggy and out her window. “Brooklyn.” He sits back and watches her, notices her rubbing her left pinky and smiles briefly before asking in his gruffest voice. “Is everything alright, Agent Carter?” 

Peggy snaps out of it and returns her attention to her commanding officer. “Yes Sir. Everything is fine. Now then, the 107th have reached the second checkpoint in the march towards the western front. There was no engagement.” 

“Well done, Carter.” Phillips praises. “Sounds like your strategy is getting our boys where they need to be safely. I can see why British Command was so pissy when I took you from their French operations.”

Peggy did her best not to smile or blush at the praise. “I do my best, Sir.” 

When she wasn’t with Phillips, Peggy was working closely with Dr. Abraham Erskine, escorting him into the city, or working with him on base. She forced herself to ignore the prickling in her finger, and convinced herself that the tug she felt whenever she went into the city was all in her head. They were doing important work, a way to turn the tides and win the war, and Peggy couldn’t, wouldn’t lose focus. Winning the war was far more important than a fable about a red string tying her to some random person she was fated to love.

Standing beside Howard as he worked on his vita radiation machine Peggy did her best to keep him on task, even if that meant listening to him go on and on about some expo he was putting on while they were stateside to drum up recruitment and to give people a bit of fun during this hard time. The whole time she was standing there she was absentmindedly rubbing the side of her hand, gently raking her short nails over her pinky. When Howard does something to his machine that makes a lot of sparks and fills the air around them with the smell of ozone, Peggy jumps back and then slaps his arm. “Howard! Be careful!”

“Sorry Peg.” Howard pouts when he sees her rubbing her left hand. “You ok? Did you get hurt?” 

“I’m fine.” She huffs at him, annoyed.

“Agent Carter.” Dr. Erskine calls gently from where he had been working. “Perhaps we should give Howard some space. Come liebchen, let him blow himself up, and not us along with him.” 

Howard huffed. “Thanks for the vote of confidence there, Doc.” 

Peggy continued to grumble at Howard but allowed Dr. Erskine to lead her away for a quick break. The last few times they’d been in the underground lab the sensation in her pinky hadn’t been so bad, and it was much easier to ignore. If she believed in this poppycock she would have said the tug was pulling her towards Manhattan, but of course she didn’t. Today however, the sensation seemed to be particularly unignorable. 

Erskine smiled, catching the young woman rubbing the side of hand on her skirt again. They had grown rather close since Peggy rescued him, so he did not shy away from saying, “You can only ignore it for so long, liebchen.” 

Peggy blinked as she raised dark eyes to look at the man sat across from with a puzzled expression. “Ignore what, Doctor?” 

“The pull of whoever is at the other end of your string.” Erskine replies gently, a warm smile on his whiskered face. 

“Oh, surely you don’t believe in that nonsense, Doctor Erskine.” Peggy replies. “You’re a thoughtful, intelligent man of science.”

Erskine continues to smile at her in an almost fatherly way while reaching out across the table to take her hand in his. “Do you know why I believed you so readily when you told me my family was dead, Margarete, hmm? It’s because I felt the string between myself and my wife sever like it was snipped by the Fates themselves.” He patted her hand. “The red string is no mere child’s tale, liebchen. Perhaps now is not the time for you to find who is on the other end of yours, but it will happen someday.” 

If a man like Abraham Erskine believed in fate then perhaps Peggy was wrong to think it all a fantasy? Hell, when she’d asked Howard even he admitted to believing in the string. He told her that he was in no way ready to deal with his, and that he had never once felt anything tingle or tug at his finger. Howard believed in three things, science, money, and himself. So if he thought this whole red string of fate thing was real, and Erskine said it was real, then maybe there was something to it? 

Steve Rogers was ninety pounds of stubbornness and heart. Erskine saw something special in him. Phillips saw a waste of time, resources, and space that could be used by a real soldier. Peggy saw a man determined to do the right thing, who wanted to help and protect others, at the detriment to himself. Steve Rogers was ninety pounds of stubbornness and heart, and he made Peggy’s heart flutter in a particular way that made her smile and bite her lip. Steve, who was from Brooklyn, sat beside her in the back of the car on their way to change his life and the war, talking about finding the right partner and Peggy found herself wanting to reach out and take his hand. She wanted to believe that if she did she would find that he was the one on the other end of her string. 

Peggy touched him. She hadn’t meant to, and she was embarrassed that she had given in to a moment of temptation. But Peggy had touched Steve with her left hand and nothing happened. Maybe she needed to take his hand? In those stories her mother would tell her it was always when the hands came together that the moment would happen. “My aunt was a cook in one of the big country houses,” Amanda Carter would tell her little girl. “I would visit every summer from London and she would take me to the village fair. I had seen your father around the village, felt a pull towards him, but it wasn’t until the village fair that I knew. I took his hand, and that’s when we knew, we’d found the end of our strings.” 

It was a lovely story really. Her parents had met shortly after her father’s return from the Great War. They married, had Michael, moved to Hampstead and had her. There was no need to try and make it some grand romantic fairy tale. Steve was a good man, with a good heart, who actually cared about doing the right thing. Red string or no red string Peggy had feelings for Steve, and if the newsreels were anything to go by, he had them for her as well. It didn’t matter that as soon as they left the states the tingle in her finger stopped, and she no longer felt such a powerful pull towards anything or anyone, though if she allowed herself too, she could tell you which way New York was no matter where they were in the world.

When Steve crashed the Valkyrie, sacrificing his life to save millions, Peggy found herself thinking about what Erskine had said about feeling his connection to his wife being cut. She wondered, despite telling herself to stop thinking about that red string nonsense, if her grief would be worse if she and Steve had been connected. String or no string, Peggy was hurting.   
Taking that hurt she turned it into focus and determination to pick up Steve’s shield and carry on, metaphorically speaking. 

Peggy hadn’t expected to find herself back in the states, and certainly not back in New York, but that’s where she was assigned. And much to her dismay, as soon as she arrived that tingle, that tug, she had felt during the war, it was back. Peggy ignored it harder than ever before. If she were going to work towards the greater good in Steve’s name, she would have to focus on that, on showing the fatheads she worked with that she was more than just the girl they’d been saddled with because she’d been Captain America’s sweetheart. It wasn’t easy, in fact it was a daily struggle, but Peggy soldiered on. Even on the days when it felt like she was slamming herself repeatedly into an unmovable brick wall. 

Following a particularly frustrating day Peggy left work in quite the foul mood. The dark clouds gathering in the sky above her seemed to perfectly illustrate the storm brewing inside her. Needing to clear her head she began walking with no real destination in mind, she just wanted to get as far from work as possible. As she walked it began to rain but Peggy took no notice, she was English after all, a little rain was almost welcome as she tried to cool off. If Thompson called her Midge or Marge one more time, or if Daniel didn’t stop looking for excuses to try and take her hand, she was going to show them why the Howling Commandos had made her one of them. She was more capable then any of them, but she wasn’t being given the chance to show them what she could do. It was really making her angry, and unsure, and she really hated feeling so damn uncertain about things. During the war she had purpose, and that’s all she wanted now, a chance to serve her purpose. 

Thunder cracked overhead causing Peggy to look up just as the sky opened up into a downpour. “Bollocks!’ 

Peggy had been so lost in her thoughts and emotions that she hadn’t been aware of the fact that she was unconsciously allowing herself to be tugged in a certain direction. A tug that had Peggy dashing through the revolving doors of an automat with neon green lights over the door declaring it the L&L. Shaking out her dark blue trench coat and taking off her favorite red hat to shake the rain from it as well Peggy muttered, “Oh bloody hell.” 

“Rough day?” A voice asked from the counter. 

Peggy looked up to find a kind faced young woman with pretty blue eyes and a warm smile. Without thinking she lifts her left hand and begins to rub and starch at her pinky. The sensation she had gotten so good at ignoring crept up her left arm as if marching towards her chest and suddenly Peggy couldn’t breathe. 

“You’re shivering.” The young woman says worriedly. “Come on, take a load off and I’ll get ya something warm to drink, coffee, or tea? I’m pretty sure I heard an accent.” 

It took several seconds for Peggy’s brain to kick in and then she took a careful step forward. She could no longer ignore the pull she felt, the tug towards this woman behind the counter of an American dinner in a bluish or greenish, she really couldn’t tell which, waitress uniform. She was very pretty, and her smile was bright and warm, and her eyes shone with understanding that made Peggy take another step towards her. Finally, she managed an almost hoarsely replied, “Tea, please, that would be lovely, thank you.” 

Peggy took a seat on the stool, keeping her left hand in her lap, rubbing her pinky against the fabric of her skirt as if that would make the sensations she was feeling stop. When the woman returns with the tea she smiles at Peggy and says, “I’m Angie.” 

“Peggy.” Peggy replies softly and watches as Angie scratches at her right pinky. Peggy’s dark eyes linger there for a moment before cutting back up to catch Angie’s blue ones. 

Angie smiles. “You were here before, well not here in the automat, but close by, during the war.” 

Peggy nods. “New Jersey.” 

“Jersey, huh. Was that your first experience here? Sorry about that.” Angie’s voice is light and teasing, her smile smaller but still warm. “Nobody should have to do Jersey their first time here.” 

Despite herself Peggy smiles back. They spend all evening, and every evening after that, talking in between Angie’s customers. Angie is sweet and smart, and sassy in a way that makes Peggy smile and smirk. She has a good heart, and she’s strong and brave in that way that women with dreams have to be. But Peggy is still cautious, she is the master of her own fate damnit, until one night as they make their way through the park on their way back to the Griffith from the cinema. 

Angie suddenly stops and looks up towards the surprisingly clear night sky. She smiles and says, “When I was little I used to go up to the roof of our building and look up at the stars. I would sit there for hours wondering about who was on the other end of my string. Were they kind? Smart? Funny? Would they be handsome or pretty?” She blushes a little at the one. “I would wonder what they were doing right then in that moment, or what had they done that day? What was their favorite treat? Were they safe? Did they have enough to eat? Were their parents kind? Were they loved?” 

When Angie began to speak Peggy slowly turned her head towards the other woman to look at her with a wide doe eyed expression on her face. 

“What?” Angie chuckled when she felt Peggy’s gaze on her. 

“I did the same thing.” Peggy says softly. “When I was small and believed the red string was real and romantic.” 

Angie smirks. “You sayin’ you don’t believe it’s real? Cause you certainly guard your left hand like you believe it’s real.” 

Peggy raises her left hand and looks at it, flexes her fingers, and then reaches out with her right to rub the thin red band around her pinky. “I’ve had my doubts.” She admits softly. “I’ve seen things, Angie. Been told stories of loss, and experienced it myself, how much worse would it be if I lost you?” 

“I’m not goin’ anywhere, Peg.” Angie replies. “Not if I can help it. String or no string, I’m pretty sweet on you Peggy Carter.”

Peggy smiles and blushes a bit. “Despite my best efforts to the contrary I find myself rather taken with you as well, Angie Martinelli.” Peggy bites her lip hard, lets her gaze fall back to her hand, and then makes the choice. Peggy looks up at Angie, smiles, and holds out her left hand. 

“You sure, English?” Angie asks softly, her blue eyes flicking back and forth between Peggy’s eyes and her outstretched hand. “Once it’s done it can’t be undone.” 

“I’m certain.” Peggy nods. 

Angie reaches for Peggy’s hand with her right and as soon as their hands are clasped together their red string appears and coils around their hands, wrists, and half way up their arms. It’s a warm, bright, magical feeling that causes them both to gasp as if taking in a full breath of air for the first time in their lives. In that moment they can hear the beat of each other’s hearts, and they marvel at the way they beat in sync. They drift closer together and with their entwined hands pressed between them, they kiss. There are gentle cheers from the handful of people sharing the park with them because the moment a person finds the other end of their red string is a moment to be celebrated. Both young women blush as they smile, their kiss shifting into the gentle pressing of foreheads. 

“Lemon tarts.” Peggy says in a gentle whisper. 

Angie chuckles. “What?” 

“When we were small and you were wondering what my favorite treat was.” Peggy replies, smiling. “It was lemon tarts. And there was always plenty to eat, I was safe, and my parents were firm but kind, and they loved us, my brother and I, very much.” 

“Good, I’m happy that you were taken care of before you got to me.” Angie replies brightly. 

Peggy nods, “And now we’ll take care of each other.”


End file.
